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Alliance & Leicester updates email system

Finance house tightens email administration to comply with legal requirements

Alliance & Leicester Commercial Finance has rolled out a policy-based email management and archiving system to improve email administration and reduce storage capacity.

The [email protected] system will also help the company to conform with regulations from the Financial Services Authority, which demand that financial institutions store all business emails as exclusive records in a non-erasable format which can be accessed easily for up to seven years.

Chris Nevill, IT manager at Alliance & Leicester CF, explained that the company recognised the need to be legally compliant with its electronic communications.

"After evaluating several packages, we went for the solution that could grow with our organisation's requirements, whilst being quick to implement, easy to manage in-house and adding value to our business," he said.

"[email protected] provides us with a comprehensive audit trail so that finding emails will never pose a problem."

Following a successful pilot, the company is rolling out the service to 200 users based in Manchester. Residing on Microsoft Exchange servers, [email protected] is accessed through a web browser.

"Once the solution went live, we encountered no teething problems and very little in the way of user worries," said Nevill.

Computer Solutions and Finance Group (CSF), which rolled out [email protected] for Alliance & Leicester CF, claimed that customers can expect 100 per cent return on investment within 12 months of implementation.

Mike Cohen, director and co-founder of CSF, said: "In light of new industry regulations an impetus has been placed on the thorough accountability of electronic communications."